A Burden Heavier Than Iron

In 1660, John Bunyan was arrested for preaching without a license and thrown into Bedford County Jail. He was offered freedom on one condition: stop preaching. He refused, and spent years behind bars — separated from his wife and four children, including a blind daughter he called "the apple of his eye."

Most men would have broken. Bunyan did not.

In those long prison years, he wrote. Out of that confined stillness came The Pilgrim's Progress — the story of a man named Christian who sets out for the Celestial City carrying an enormous burden on his back. Christian faces the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and Doubting Castle. He is mocked, betrayed, and nearly undone. But he keeps walking.

Bunyan knew something about walking under a burden. The story he told was the story he was living.